1. That part of the reason for retaining the law on parallel importing was that local book providers already face competition from imported books. If this is the case there must indeed be significant cost savings in buying books in global markets rather than purchasing them locally. This runs counter to claims that the price savings in allowing parallel imports are low. If they were low local publishers would have little to fear anyway.

2. If Australia seeks to support local authors – I don’t reject this – then give them a subsidy not penalise all consumers with higher prices. Local authors don’t like this because their dependence on goverrnment handouts becomes explicit but such subsidies are less restrictive than partial prohibitive tariffs on trade and provide comprehensive protection for Australian authors even in the face of online purchases.

It is just so important for people to learn some basic economics. Governments can get away with this interest group-driven stupidity that inflicts net costs on society as a whole only because not enough people understand some basic logic about markets.

12 comments to Books to remain expensive

The really strange thing about this is that it simply ignores reality, since if you want a book, you can generally get it from ebay anywhere in the world, usually for far cheaper than a bookstore like Readings (even better if it’s second-hand). These sorts of laws stopping importing are for people that still think the world operates like 1992. Even if they would have been good then, they’re pointless now.

On this occasion, Harry, the politics have trumped the economics. It happens with all governments. The literary set who wanted to keep the restrictions are an important Labor constituency. Bizarrely, the restrictions are not even generally in their interest, but they have a reflexive opposition to free markets. It might be pointed out to them that the economics of allowing parallel imports of books are the same economics that propose to put a price on carbon, which they support, but that would be a waste of time.

Unfortunately the case for removal was led by Bob Carr, who nobody likes, with good reason. And the language in the Productivity Commission, with its talk of “cultural exteranlities”, was just awful. This is a case study in how a good cause was butchered by poor presentation.

And in fairness to Emerson, he did look look uncomfortable defending the decision.

You can take some comfort in the fact that the Aussie dollar so strong, buying from Amazon is now dirt cheap.

FXH, I spent a few minutes checking out ‘bookdepository’ in my field of economics. They have a good range of books – including reprints of out-of-prints and the claimed free postage would help. On the recent Freakonomics they quoted $20-77US compared to Amazon’s $16-47US which would be about the same given Amazon’s postage charges. I spend a lot at Amazon so I’ll keep this in mind but I like Amazon. Very good service and now a vast range now available for kindle.

As you wish, Harry, but I find BookDepository mostly a bit cheaper than Amazon once you factor in shipping. And their service is first-rate. If you’re happy with secondhand or if the book is out of print then you really can’t go past Abebooks – especially as its network does include a lot of Australian secondhand bookshops.

I buy lots of books but I very rarely buy at bookshops – it’s just too expensive and you’re limited by what they’re choosing to promote and stock. FXH is dead right about the authors though – they’re quite clueless as to their own interests. And Uncle Milton is right about Emerson – you can see he got rolled in Cabinet and now has to publicly grin and bear it while eating the shit sandwich in public, just as we are used to seeing Garrett do.

And yes I’ve had a good experience with amazon when I sent about $200 worth of books to my daughter in Taiwan.

They never arrived – I suspect because they were knocked off somewhere in Taiwan but Amazon refunded me the lot – no hassle – I naturally re-ordered all of them and they arrived – so I’m assuming they think I’m honest for next
time.